The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 112th continuation)

[k_a_webb]

Part 1

Part 9, 111th continuation

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“Is there a Web like that?” Bertram asked, looking at Meriwether.

Meriwether nodded. “If you can think of something that might have happened differently to how it did here then there is, most likely, a Web where it happened. Some of those Webs are really terrifying places and hearing about them makes me more grateful for what I have here. Others…” He rubbed his antler. “When the time comes that I’m permitted to explore the other Webs they will be the ones I head for first, because they seem as though they work better than this one, although that is probably not the case.”

“Why would you say that?” Durai studied Meriwether as though they’d never met before and Lucille couldn’t help wondering how it felt to suddenly learn more about someone you believed you knew. “I’ve always thought a Web without the fae would be a much better place.”

“There is a chance they would be, but what you have to understand is that the Webs are all populated by flawed beings. Even after spending as much time as I have living numerous lives you still make the wrong choices a lot of the time.” He sighed. “I’m lucky enough to know of the lives I lived before, to have the knowledge from them in this life, and yet I still find myself second guessing some of the decisions that I make, because I know that it’s so easy to make a mistake that could affect hundreds or thousands of people. Telling myself that I’m not fae any longer doesn’t really help as I technically still am. My soul was born fae and it doesn’t matter how many lives I live as another race.”

“Is that the same for us?” Lucille’s eyes met Meriwether’s. “Or is it different because we don’t remember the lives we lived before?”

“Created souls are different to born souls.” Meriwether rubber his antler again, looking as though he’d just thought of something he hadn’t before. “Of course I’ve just realised I have no idea which my soul is and whether that’s had an effect on my life, but I know it does have an effect on yours. If you have a created soul it’s more likely to be affected by the lives that you live, while having a born soul will mean it’s much more likely that, were you to remember your past lives, you’d feel more whatever it was you were first. That isn’t the same for everyone, which is why I said more likely, because it isn’t impossible for someone with a born soul that soon chose to live a life as one of the Witches of Raenarin to have a soul that feels much more like the mouse of Quiar they were during their third life.”

“Why does your first life have so much of an effect?”

“That’s something I don’t know much about, even though Bronwen did try to explain it to me. When we first started the creation of the Web she didn’t know anywhere near as much as she did towards the end and she always admitted that it was thanks to the Weavers she did know so much. From what she said their help was really useful as they, thanks to the magic of Athare, had been given the chance to learn more about what the Yellows would be doing. I think they even saw the creation of the Dragons, which is something I wish I’d been lucky enough to witness, but unfortunately that’s probably never going to happen, even if I was there at the time.”

“You really think you’ll never remember the fae lives you lived before?”

“No matter how much I’d like to I really do think my memories of them are gone.” Meriwether shrugged. “Before you ask, yes I have tried the ritual and nothing came back to me, so maybe the life I came here really was my first life. That is always possible. I’d really like to talk to some other fae to find out if they have the same problem, but I have no idea where most of them ended up, so it’s just going to have to wait until I’m lucky enough to come across someone I know.” He sighed. “That, unfortunately, may never happen, but that won’t stop me from hoping.”

“When I talk to Carver I’ll see if he knows where Azure is. If we are right…” Lucille smiled. “If she is Mab then there’s a chance she might know something that will help you.”

“Hopefully.” Meriwether smiled. “I really would like to meet up with Mab again at some point. After everything we went through together I do still miss her sometimes. There are other fae I miss too, but Mab… being be able to rebuild her confidence enough to become a real part of the World Creation Council, and then later the World Walkers Council, after everything that had happened, and the problems that we faced making the Web, meant she was a very different person to the one we thought she was. Once we started actually getting to know her, rather than the face she showed, it became obvious that she regretted the choices that she made, that she really was doing her best to look after her people, and the real mistake she made was listening to the elders, as she truly believed they knew what they were talking about.

“Like the majority of our monarchs she was young. Going through the election process was hard work, so the older fae often didn’t want to be a part of it, and it was something that happened every decade, which meant they knew they had a better chance of getting something to happen if they worked with the elders, who’d be in the same position for much longer. An elder would also teach their successor. Monarchs never did, in part because the monarch who followed them was unlikely to be in the same family. There was a point when we had a series of Blue monarchs, but that was during the early years of the Thirteen Families. Once the families started feuding with each other…” He sighed. “Unfortunately they affected everything.

“It was to be expected, really. When you set up something like that it’s always hard for everyone to work together and I know the other fae monarchs dealt with the same problems, although it wasn’t the same for them, as they weren’t elected. Having an elected monarch, at the beginning, made a lot of sense, as it meant the best person would be voted into the position, but later on it became a popularity contest. Some did their best to vote for someone they thought would change the Thirteen Families for the better and the rest did what came naturally – they voted for the family they liked the most. Blues voted for Yellows, Greens voted for Greys, Blacks voted for Reds… Mab was elected, in part, because of her family. They’d like Mab’s mother and grandmother, so they voted for Mab, even though she was actually nothing like them, and, when she was elected, she did her best to become them. If she hadn’t run I don’t know who would have been elected, although I believed we would have still been in the same position. No monarch would want to work against the elders, because if they did it would have an effect on their future. Honestly I’m not certain Mab ever would have made the decision she did if it hadn’t been for the loss of her elders.

“They were older, but not as old as some of the fae. It was the oldest and strongest fae who were most affected by the loss of magic, and they died first. Elders were more in the middle when it came both to strength and age, because the oldest fae wanted the time to enjoy their last years while the strongest wanted to focus on their magic. Often the older fae would pass their position on to a younger member of the family, to do just that, and the strongest fae were often in a different part of the family, as they would breed for knowledge down one line and power down the other. I was fortunate in that I wasn’t a part of either of those lines, although that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be handfasted to someone for a particular reason, normally an alliance that my father or grandfather particularly wanted.

“So when they started dying it was a real sign that something was seriously wrong. I’m almost glad they did, otherwise we would have stayed on Kalinia until the world faded, because the Greens said that if they hadn’t made the door that day they wouldn’t have been able to.” He shuddered. “We were very lucky to have been able to get somewhere safe and I think that’s part of what made Mab accept that the choices she’d made before really had been mistakes. Although, from what she said, she had never really wanted to make the decisions she had, but she really wanted to believe her elders knew what they were talking about. It wasn’t something she’d dealt with before, or Willow, and when she was told that Willow was overreacting she accepted that.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.

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>> They’d like Mab’s mother and grandmother, so they voted for Mab, <<

I think that should say "They had liked" above.